Back in 2007, I Am Legend – starring Will Smith – proved to be a huge hit after grossing over 5 million worldwide. That success obviously led to talk of a sequel, but for whatever reason, it just never happened (despite numerous reports to the contrary).
Co-writer and producer Akiva Goldsman recently sat down with io9 to talk about his upcoming adaptation of Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel, Winter’s Tale, and the subject of a follow-up to I Am Legend quickly came up. After quite clearly stating that there was “never” talk of an I Am Legend 2, he added:
“Oh no no, [there was] never a movie. I mean, we wrote a prequel [and] a sequel. We had a really interesting prequel, which was the first outbreak of the virus, during a Thanksgiving Day parade, which was awesome.
We did a really interesting prequel that [took place] later. Which was right after the first… really right when the population of humans became pretty decimated. And it was this sort of trek to Washington. Which included a dark seeker elephant that had broken out of the zoo.
Then we did a sequel, that started with Neville again — and you realized that he was cloned. We’ve tried every which way. In fact if you’re available you could be in the next movie. It will never happen but we really enjoyed trying to make it happen.”
It sounds as if they really did try to get another I Am Legend movie off the ground, but the studio just didn’t go for it for some reason. Critics praised the first movie for Will Smith’s performance, and the ideas above both sound as if they could have been very appealing to audiences.
Are you disappointed that they didn’t make I Am Legend 2? Which of the scripts would you have liked them to use? Let us know in the comment section below!
